[velichay]

I am not

[uncoosesoge]

water boarding - the practice of submerging prisoners in water

As far as I know, this is an incorrect description of the waterboarding techniques used by the CIA. Not that I expect the media to care about accuracy in such things...

[addisonnicogel]

Originally posted by MMC
Let's laugh at people who didn't see this coming... Wait, you actually believed that Bush would admit this to be true?

[Kamendoriks]

They will have a fair trial, and then they'll be shot.

Colonel Klink

[Precturge]

As for the CIA program... I admit I'm not exactly outraged. I'm concerned, but I'd rather the CIA be engaging in some shadowy interrogations than be invading/bombing other countries, or sitting back and waiting for the next group of whackjobs to blow up a bunch of Americans.

-Arrian

[Zpxbawtz]

I care, I'm just not surprised. Seriously, there really isn't anything this Admin can do at this point that would change my opinion of their performance (downright awful).

-Arrian

[PharmaDrMan]

OMG, is this a new reality show? Holy crap, it all comes together. Some ass is going to jump out and yell, "You've been Punkizzled!"

[cabonuserollyo]

Originally posted by mactbone
Nobody cares? The administration spent months denying this. Other governments wouldn't talk about it. Now Bush finally admits it and everybody goes, "meh?" They did? Funny I thought they responded with condemnation against WaPo for leaking a classified program.

[pooncophy]

But...I'm not surprised. It's just a variation on the same theme he's been using since 9/11.

Paint everything in black and white. Us and them, right down the line.

And try to couch what you're doing in grandiose terms that are too big for you (a global war on Islamic Fascisim).

I used to be indifferent, but as more time passes and we get to see just what this guy is made of, I must confess that I HATE everything that this man and his Administration stand for.

I hate the cronyism.

The lies.

All of it, and I cannot WAIT until this fool is out of office.

I would rather rip the whole thing down than risk another President like this one.

-=Vel=-

[UvgpXK0J]

I can only presume that ... Or you could presume that, like so many other things the Bush admin has done, there IS NO GOOD REASON.

That may or may not really be the case, but there is a course of performance here, Ogie.

-Arrian

[VonErmad4]

Originally posted by Velociryx

I could buy this as an explanation, but for one thing....it would be far easier (and cheaper) to pull off a ruse like that than it would be to actually have a series of "secret prisons" lined up and waiting.

I mean, if that was the goal, you could blindfold the guy, throw him on a chopper, fly him around for an hour and take him back to solitary row and tell him he's in (fill in the blank with something suitably grim). It's not like they're going to let him out to ask around or buy a map and verify his location.

No...the only logical reason for HAVING the "secret prisons" is that there's something to hide. Because for all our talk about being the good guys, and for being on the "right side" of the battle lines....we're only pretending, but it'd be bad PR if that got out.

In my mind, this is a far more likely explanation, and even if false, I can guarantee you it will be the one that the bulk of the rest of the world subscribes to. And we could have avoided it by making an attempt to live up to the ideals that our country was founded upon.

Ideals that most definitely do NOT include secret prisons and torture.



-=Vel=-
The ruse might work except that a prisoner in a standard situation has to be accessible to inspectors, red cross and the like. AS soon as they know that they have some sort of oversight they have a security blanket. I don't see how a ruse would work to prevent these types of oversight from happening and hence giving the psychological security blanket.

AS for the international uproar to my mind this is but one of the reasons this is being addressed. The Democrats didn't and don't have the cahoneys to make this a huge issue as the general public feel these guys deserve torture even if it is or is not occurring. W put the onus now on the Democrats to back a tough policy or appear to go against the will of the Joe Q Public.

So in essence Bush has betrayed his beleif that the need for optimum interrogation that can only be accomplished by secret prisons and the mind games that can play on a prisoner is outwieghed by the expedience of helping Repugs and putting Demonrats on the spot as well as smoothing international relations. Personally I think it a bad trade.

[engacenus]

I dunno man...I'm still not convinced. It's a big country. There are LOTS of places you could "get lost" for a couple days if the goal was to convince someone that they'd better start talking.

I'd venture to say that it happens all the time, which makes me CRINGE to think at what sorts of atrocities we might actually be committing while calling ourselves "the good guys."

If we're gonna take the title, then we've got to talk the talk AND walk the walk...it's just that simple.

Right now, under this Admin's leadership, it's becoming painfully obvious (and more obvious by the day) that we're not.

The solution then, seems clear enough.

Let's either admit that we're not the good guys...that our hands are just as dirty, and thumb our noses at anyone who chides us for getting just as dirty as the opposition, or let's try and live up to our own ideals. The ideals we used to care something about.

That....the second option, would be my choice.

-=Vel=-

[Rasklad]

The system is pretty messed up, but we're not going to go all fascist just yet.

What really worries me isn't the system or even Bush (loathe him and his admin? yeah, but he's gone soon). What worries me is my fellow Americans. Stuff like this:

the general public feel these guys deserve torture even if it is or is not occurring. W put the onus now on the Democrats to back a tough policy or appear to go against the will of the Joe Q Public. appears to be true. I see plenty of this in wealthy, educated, liberal CT. I can only imagine what it's like in Texas.

-Arrian

[nretdjuend]

Elok - It's not that there's not historical prescident for what you're saying...there is...but there's also evidence it could go the other way.

In any case, it should be seen as a DIRE warning when a largely indifferent moderate like me starts thinking positively revolutionary thoughts to ward off another disaster like this one.

That's not my forte, but that IS my level of hatred for this Administration.

And I fear that the trouble will not end after he's gone. He's been packing the house with friends and like minded individuals...people with more smarts than he has EVER had. People who will find a way to worm their way into future administrations and continue pressing their agendas.

I doubt that Shrub could have done significantly more damage to this country -- on a variety of levels-- if he had personally been on the payroll of Al Quaida.



-=Vel=-
(nose thumbed and middle finger extended at the NSA guys)

[XYTommy]

Bush lied his ass off in that speech. Zibaydah was a frikkan driver of women and children. He gave us the dangerous terrorist . . . Jose Padilla. They claim the name he gave was Ramzi somebody or other, but not only did we already know about him, it was the Emire of Qatar who told us where he'd be so we could pick him up. After they started torturing the guy (who apparently had multiple personalities) he started making up stories in the hopes that they'd stop torturing him. We raised our terror alerts and sent squads of agents swarming around every story he gave, but nothing ever turned up.

That mans needs to be impeached!

[fedelwfget]

Che, is that story true? I feel bad for the tortured guy but it is hilarious, the tortured guy with multiple personalities inventing stories, it sounds like from a movie

[Gakeincidoniac]

The Legal Debate
Interrogation Methods Rejected by Military Win Bush’s Support
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: September 8, 2006

Many of the harsh interrogation techniques repudiated by the Pentagon on Wednesday would be made lawful by legislation put forward the same day by the Bush administration. And the courts would be forbidden from intervening.

The proposal is in the last 10 pages of an 86-page bill devoted mostly to military commissions, and it is a tangled mix of cross-references and pregnant omissions.

But legal experts say it adds up to an apparently unique interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, one that could allow C.I.A. operatives and others to use many of the very techniques disavowed by the Pentagon — including stress positions, sleep deprivation and extreme temperatures.

“It’s a Jekyll and Hyde routine,” Martin S. Lederman, who teaches constitutional law at Georgetown University, said of the administration’s dual approaches.

In effect, the administration is proposing to write into law a two-track system that has existed as a practical matter for some time.

So-called high-value detainees held by the C.I.A. have been subjected to tough interrogation in secret prisons around the world. More run-of-the-mill prisoners held by the Defense Department have, for the most part, faced milder questioning, although human rights groups say there have been widespread abuses.

The new bill would continue to give the C.I.A. the substantial freedom it has long enjoyed, while the revisions to the Army Field Manual announced Wednesday would further restrict military interrogators. The legislation would leave open the possibility that the military could revise its own standards to allow the harsher techniques.

John C. Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former Justice Department official who helped develop the administration’s early legal response to the terrorist threat, said the bill would provide people on the front lines with important tools.

“When you’re fighting a new kind of war against an enemy we haven’t faced before,” Professor Yoo said, “our system needs to give flexibility to people to respond to those challenges.”

In June, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court ruled that a provision of the Geneva Conventions concerning the humane treatment of prisoners applied to all aspects of the conflict with Al Qaeda. The new bill would keep the courts from that kind of meddling, Professor Yoo said.

“There is a rejection of what the court did in Hamdan,” he said, “which is to try to judicially enforce the Geneva Conventions, which no court had ever tried to do before.”

Indeed, the proposed legislation takes pains to try to ensure that the Supreme Court will not have a second bite at the apple. “The Act makes clear,” it says in its introductory findings, “that the Geneva Conventions are not a source of judicially enforceable individual rights.”

Though lawsuits will almost certainly be filed challenging the bill should it become law, most legal experts said Congress probably had the power to restrict the courts’ jurisdiction in this way.

The proposed legislation would provide retroactive immunity from prosecution to government agents who used harsh methods after the Sept. 11 attacks. And, as President Bush suggested on Wednesday, it would ensure that those techniques remain lawful.

“As more high-ranking terrorists are captured, the need to obtain intelligence from them will remain critical,” Mr. Bush said. “And having a C.I.A. program for questioning terrorists will continue to be crucial to getting life-saving information.”

Mr. Bush said he had never authorized torture but indicated that aggressive interrogation techniques short of torture remained important tools in the administration’s efforts to combat terrorism.

“I cannot describe the specific methods used — I think you understand why,” he said. “If I did, it would help the terrorists learn how to resist questioning, and to keep information from us that we need to prevent new attacks on our country. But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe and lawful and necessary.”

A senior intelligence official said that the new legislation, if enacted, would make it clear that the techniques used by the C.I.A. on senior Qaeda members who had been held abroad in secret locations would not be prohibited and that interrogators who engaged in those practices both in the past and in the future would not face prosecution. But the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, would not discuss the techniques the agency had used or was prepared to use.

Other senior administration officials, all of whom declined to speak on the record, said there was no intention to undercut the interrogation rules in the new Army Field Manual, which does not include some of the most extreme techniques used on some suspected terrorists in American custody. The intent of the legislation, they said, was to prevent the prosecution of interrogators under amendments to the War Crimes Act that were passed in the 1990’s.

Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions bars, among other things, “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.” The administration says that language is too vague.

That is nonsense, said Harold Hongju Koh, the dean of Yale Law School and a State Department official in the Clinton administration. “Outrages upon personal dignity is something like Abu Ghraib or parading our soldiers in Vietnam before the television cameras,” he said. “Unconstitutionally vague means you don’t know it when you see it.”

But the new legislation would interpret “outrages upon personal dignity” relatively narrowly, adopting a standard enacted last year in an amendment to the Detainee Treatment Act proposed by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. The amendment prohibits “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” and refers indirectly to an American constitutional standard that prohibits conduct which “shocks the conscience.”

There is substantial room for interpretation, legal experts said, between Common Article 3’s strict prohibition of, for instance, humiliating treatment and the McCain amendment’s ban only on conduct that “shocks the conscience.”

The proposed legislation, said Peter S. Margulies, a law professor at Roger Williams University, “seems to be trying to surgically remove from our compliance with Geneva the section of Common Article 3 that deals with humiliating and degrading treatment.”

The net effect of the new legislation in the interrogation context, Professor Yoo said, is to allow the C.I.A. flexibility of the sort that the revisions to the Army Field Manual have denied to the Pentagon. The bill lets the C.I.A. “operate with a freer hand” than the Defense Department “in that space between the Army Field Manual and the McCain amendment,” he said.

Dean Koh said the administration’s new interpretation of the Geneva Conventions would further isolate the United States from the rest of the world.

“Making U.S. ratification of Common Article 3 narrower and more conditional than everyone else’s,” he said, “by its very nature suggests that we are not prepared to make the same commitment that every other nation has made.”

The bill proposed by the White House would also amend the War Crimes Act, which makes violations of Common Article 3 a felony. Those amendments are needed, the administration said, to provide guidance to American personnel.

The new legislation makes a list of nine “serious violations” of Common Article 3 federal crimes. The prohibited conduct includes torture, murder, rape, and the infliction of severe physical or mental pain. By implication, some legal experts said, the bill endorses the use of those interrogation techniques that are not mentioned.

The proposed legislation in any event represents a further retreat from international legal standards by an administration already hostile to them, some scholars said. “It’s strong evidence that this administration doesn’t accept international legal processes,’’ said Peter J. Spiro, a law professor at Temple University.

A pox on the chickenshit chickenhawks who runs this administration.

[cwgwowcom]

GePap: wtldr

[GZFL2tDA]

way too long didn't read

[GillTeepbew]

It just never ends.

Like I said....Shrub is the best friend the terrorists have. With him in office pushing for crap like this, the terrorists have already won.



-=Vel=-

And Che....I'm not sure you'd like what shape my 'revolution' took as it would most definitely embrace market principles, but no matter...viva!